


It Pleased the Lord

by MissingTriforce



Series: A Kinder Universe [7]
Category: Gehenna: The Final Night, Vampire: The Masquerade, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: About to Die, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Blood Drinking, Blood Sharing, Blow Jobs, Daddy Kink, Dom/sub, Fix-It, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Sex Positive, Stress Relief, Suicide Attempt, The Withering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:28:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23765368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissingTriforce/pseuds/MissingTriforce
Summary: “Did you not think it strange,” Caine said, trying to prompt revelation, “that his childer’s apocalypse came and went, and Caine did not appear? Rumor whispered nothing of him.”AU in which Caine gives a damn. Dom!Daddy!Caine/sub!Beckett. Angst Heavy.
Relationships: Beckett (Vampire: The Masquerade)/Caine (Vampire: The Masquerade)
Series: A Kinder Universe [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645372
Comments: 9
Kudos: 14





	It Pleased the Lord

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Anatole said as they lay in bed, Anatole’s head on Beckett’s breast. “I can’t tell what it is.” Anatole gave a biting, frustrated groan and mussed their face against the soft brown wires of his chest hair. “Why?”

Beckett didn’t answer. He kissed Anatole’s brow and breathed in the scent of red honey. For the last time.

#

Caine stood in the corner and waited for Beckett to return from the airfield. He could hear far off yells and street noise, and he could smell the damp mold climbing up the pipes and glue-dust of wallpaper peeling. The victorious Memory-seekers had holed up in an abandoned hotel, for the sake of the many beds. Dilapidated as they were, the beds were better than the floor, upon which mouse and rat scurried and squeaked in indignation at having their home invaded.

As soon as the Gangrel opened the door to his and Anatole’s former room, Caine asked the first question. “You sent them away. Why?”

Beckett closed the door behind him. “And I thought I told you to move on as well, Kapaneus. We stopped Gehenna. That’s enough socializing for one century, don’t you think?”

Caine gave him a long look—if Beckett did not want to answer, Caine would be forced to the razor of simplicity. Beckett refused to meet his eyes and instead moved to fiddle with the boards against the windows. The boards were fine. Beckett was not. An advantage of time, of the weight of experience—Caine knew the faces men wore when they said goodbye to their unknowing friends.

“You sent them away,” Caine repeated. “You told them you were going to Montreal to reconcile with Aristotle, and yet you remain here, in this hovel, and have not told Cesare to ready the plane.”

“I didn’t say I was going to fly out immediately,” Beckett insisted. “And Cesare was positively delighted to remain for longer, after I gave him his monthly dose.” His shoulders hunched, and Caine knew the pain of the Withering had returned once more. Sooner, this time. Caine clicked his tongue.

Beckett was kind. He did not like to become close to people, to allow them to touch him, because he was frightened of his own kindness. To touch him would the first step in breaking him, in sneaking the knife in. He may fall in love with anyone who gave him conversation and held his hand. This much, Caine had observed. What kindness was Beckett planning now?

Caine huffed. Of course—the kindness of hope. If Anatole and Lucita were not here to witness his death, they could hope, for years perhaps. They could search for him and accept his death slowly. Once they scoured the earth, once they triple-checked his old haunts, once they found no trace, the loss would come home to roost.

Caine crossed his arms over his chest. Stubborn. He would not allow this preposterous future. Beckett’s brown, wavy hair was still slightly disheveled from Anatole kissing goodbye. “It is just as well. I have something of interest to tell you, should you care to lend me your ear.”

Beckett left off fiddling and turned on his heel. The red eyes transfixed Caine every time. Not so rare among his Gangrel childer, these animal eyes, but rare their shade and pupil matched his. Back in LA, he had caught a glimpse of them while driving and almost slammed the brake, to stop this childe then and there. When he finally heard the deep masculine voice, it pleased him all the more. “What could you possibly want with me? We had a deal. I allowed you on our Gehenna quest, and you hid my condition from everyone. The quest is complete, so you are no longer required to provide your services. You may go.”

This deal had come at a cost. It was difficult to mask himself from a Prophet of Gehenna, for seeing him was their main power and purpose. Finding small secret places to heal Beckett—to coax his tissue and magic to their usual vigor—had been easier.

Memories of similar conversation with prophets and saints flitted through his mind. “Did you not think it strange,” Caine said, trying to prompt revelation, “that his childer’s apocalypse came and went, and Caine did not appear? Rumor whispered nothing of him.”

Beckett frowned. “The thought did occur. My rational mind suggested that our mythical progenitor had perished long ago. We have proof that Gehenna is real enough—or a form of ‘Gehenna’ anyway. It does not follow that Caine still exists.” His next words loosed acid and scorn. “Why? Did you think Daddy would answer our calls?”

Caine said nothing, only looked over his sunglasses at Beckett in obvious disappointment. Come on. You are one of the smart ones. Perhaps it was a mental block. Or the pain was getting to him more than Caine realized. Contrary to popular belief, the Withering was not a sickness Caine had cast in judgement. He did not know from where it originated. That ignorance troubled, but he hadn’t survived the whole history of the human race by being paranoid. If it became necessary, he would find the sorcerer who started it and kill them. Or compromise. Like he was going to kill or compromise this sickness within Beckett. His Beckett would survive.

Beckett glared at him, but Caine let the challenge flow away. Beckett didn’t hate him—Caine had and would continue to take any measure, any length, to not have Beckett hate him. He didn’t desire to live in that timeline. This was going to be the better timeline, the kindest universe.

He tried again. “If I were the Dark Father, I would tire of our eternal struggle. I would find a place I would not be disturbed and only emerge if there were a great injustice, or someone particularly interesting.”

“Like how you stuck yourself in the cave in deep meditation, surrounded by the bones of the Feast of Folly,” Beckett said. His frown twisted. Maybe he got it now? He took a single step toward Caine. “What are you saying?”

“If I were the Wanderer, I would travel with a childe who came upon my hiding place, for no one had done that before—not to save a friend. I would see what there is to see and learn what there is to learn. I might be impressed, for how my childer have grown and changed.”

Beckett took another step, and Caine could almost imagine the thoughts flying through that gorgeous brain. Beckett’s hand spasmed, and the Gangrel clutched his chest, like it hurt deeply. “Kapaneus, stop talking.”

“If I were the Dark Tyrant, I would judge the childer and realize that dividing the wicked from the virtuous is pointless. I would realize, through the actions of the intruding childe perhaps, that all can be redeemed. All can strive for good, if their basic needs are met and they are given the freedom to step on that path.”

Beckett emitted a deep, soul-wrenching cry. Alarm and victory raced through Caine’s veins in equal measure. Beckett stumbled, and Caine half-caught him by the elbows as he fell to his knees. Caine ensured he landed gently.

Beckett looked up at him with a face of perfect anguish. His thick body trembled, his cat pupils narrowed in search, his lips quivered—he wanted to cry, but couldn’t because of the curse. Better to let the emotions out. Caine cradled Beckett’s wane face with his dark hands and called on his blood to grant feeling. Slowly, slowly, Beckett’s face flushed, and those vermillion eyes filled and overflowed with silver tears. Beckett latched onto Caine’s coat hem.

“Why are you telling me this? Why now?” Beckett croaked, and Caine’s jealous heart seized on such a lovely sound.

“Your actions taught me more than I have learned in a millennium,” Caine explained. “I would savor such a teacher, instead of letting you die in this ridiculous place. We don’t even have wifi here, Beckett.”

A crazed laugh barked out of Beckett’s mouth. “I can’t take this.”

“I love you. It is that simple.”

“No,” Beckett refused, but at the same time, his claws gripped Caine’s coat tighter. He shook his head. “You can’t love me. I don’t deal with love anymore. I just sent my heart on a plane, or ordered it to stay safe in LA. I’m a dead man walking.”

“I have been dead for sixteen million years, and I love you. Tell me what to do. Tell me what you want. I will save you, and we will make a deal with the humans and build a new Enoch. Better this time. I know so much better. It is only a little diablerie, Beckett.”

“No.”

Caine wasn’t seeing what he wanted to see. In the red eyes, the gold soul windows—Beckett withdrew to some inner part of himself, somewhere Caine couldn’t access without violation of trust. He did not want a puppet of Cuthbert Beckett. He wanted the real thing.

His hands moved to soothe. He pet Beckett’s hair back, smoothing the frizzy flyaways. He removed the glasses with easy slowness, in case Beckett wanted him to stop, and put them in his breast pocket. He kissed the broad, scholarly brow. “I will think of something else then. You are still a childe, and you need care. Little Matthew was scared of the black plague and would hide himself; you’re scared of the Withering and hiding yourself. Some things never change. Let me care for you, as your father did. Though my feelings are far from fatherly.”

“I haven’t heard that name…” Beckett whimpered. “I’m so tired.” He closed those eyes, though tears still fell past the closed lids. “I’m so tired of pain.” His voice lowered to a whispered. “I did everything right, and _I’m still dying and I can’t stand it._ ”

“All shall be well. All shall be well. All shall be exceedingly well.” He bent and lifted Beckett in a fireman’s carry. Beckett’s breathing hitched as he dangled.

With care, Caine deposited him on the hotel room’s bed, plenty big for two. Methodically, he unlaced Beckett’s boots and finagled them off. Beckett lay motionless as Caine removed coat, sunglasses, and shoes, climbed onto the bed, leaned over him, ripped his shirt at the collar, and pressed his hand atop Beckett’s breast. “Feel.”

#

Beckett screamed. Strength, pure as silver, widened his veins, dilated arteries, and expanded the chambers of his heart. His back arched as Kapaneus’s hand burned through his chest, like hot iron to the bone. Hot, impossibly hot— _so human_ —searing anathema to him. Eyes bulging, pressing jelly-like against the limits of their sockets. Muscles ascended to aching, bright life. Like being electro-shocked, or decimated by machine gun fire, or riddled through with grape shot, or stabbed by hundreds of white-hot swords.

Tears blossomed afresh, and he scream-begged, “Why are you doing this?” It hadn’t hurt like this before—Kapaneus had simply touched him, and he felt better. Enough to mask symptoms, to draw a curtain over his suffering so Lucita and Anatole wouldn’t see. Wouldn’t worry. Wouldn’t prove Cassandra right, that he should never have gone East and poked this apocalypse with a stick.

“It hurts?” Genuine confusion colored Kapaneus’s voice. Immediately, the pain stopped. His body was so silent Beckett gasped. He felt alive and it was horrible—his heart pumped blood, his lungs breathed air; his armpits sweated from exertion. He shook from head to toe. _What was happening?_

“Beckett, Beckett, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought it would be an alternative. I thought if I made your powers like mine, the Withering would reverse course. I cannot be diminished. It seemed the next logical step after what I have been doing, lending and boosting your power.” Kapaneus gathered Beckett to him, and Beckett was too limp to resist. He didn’t want to resist.

His head pounded. His brain scrambled, trying to find sense and reason when none were available. He sobbed.

Kapaneus rocked him and ran a warm hand up and down his back. “Maybe you have been dead too long, and your body does not like it,” he muttered. “The fledging was fresh.”

Beckett fisted his hands into Kapaneus’s shirt and closed his eyes again. He shouldn’t be doing this. Kapaneus’s dreads were long enough to brush against his cheek and they smelled like Argan oil. He shouldn’t be here. His body reeled in heaviness. He shouldn’t surrender to this stranger. His bones echoed in awareness of themselves. He wanted to submit, be abject, think nothing, lay himself prostrate, offer up his reason on an altar and have that altar destroyed.

He shouldn’t stop—waves of preemptive grief washed and sucked him down. He whined a pathetic whistling sound like a beaten dog; let the saltwater drown him entirely. He was tired of swimming, of barely treading water, of all the effort entailed in not sinking. Cuthbert Beckett cried.

Cuthbert cried until he was Matthew Lowell again, and all his neighbors were dying around him. They would itch, they would burst puss, they would smell, they would expire; they would burn. The woody turn of wheelbarrows and clacking of horse hooves and his father holding him and his brother and praying to God to spare them please. They are only children. His strong father, wasting in worry, because he could not build or argue or fight his way out of contagion.

“Daddy, save me,” he cried. “Make it stop.”

“Shh, shh,” Kapaneus murmured. “Cry all you want, my sweet boy.”

He was undone and unwound and uncaring. His foundations moldered in pieces. He’d been asking the wrong questions and his theory was stupid and useless and wrong.

“I don’t want to die,” said a voice not his own—it was so high-pitched and desperate and wailing.

“You will not, sweet boy. I will keep you safe, and you will hold your hearts again. We will keep trying things, until we find an acceptable cure.”

The rocking and backstroking and gentle words and the agony of tears did their work. The direction to surrender, to succumb, to sink into non-thought and complete compliance—that didn’t come from Kapaneus, but within. A part of him craved to give up. Perhaps he’d insisted on independence so long because that pure, burning part of him desired the opposite.

That part resonated in the nothingness tears brought in their wake. His soul trembled, a scorched earth. Here was a father offering him guaranteed protection. His human father, the sire who Embraced him, and even his adopted sire Aristotle could never offer that—complete and utter safety were out of their power. This man could, and God, he wanted. His most base being shook overwhelmed and begged for some masculine else to take over.

Kapaneus said, “Here, sweet boy,” and Beckett sunk his teeth into Daddy’s breast.

Blood tasted good—blood softened and healed the shock. His fangs scraped, and his tongue licked the firm muscle. Daddy tasted like apples. Soft, sweet fruit down his throat, the blood the same color as a delicious apple’s skin. His belly filled. He sat up and tilted his head to catch Daddy’s lips, to smear and share crimson.

Daddy pulled him back by the hair. “This is what you want?”

Beckett keened and ordered his shaking body to lurch itself into straddling Daddy’s lap. Daddy let him, let him taste Daddy’s apple-spiked mouth, let him bite down on lips and suck the lifeforce that welled up there. “I accept and submit, Daddy. I’ll do whatever you want—only please make me feel good.” His voice croaked in hoarse tones and broke down to whispers. “Save me.”

Guilt and shame rose like floodwaters, but Beckett let himself drown. His hands quivered in their attempt to paw off Daddy’s shirt, until Daddy’s dark hands covered and guided. The same exhausting ordeal to get his own jacket, soft thermal shirt, and gloves off.

Both topless, Beckett panted from his efforts. Daddy seemed to be mulling Beckett’s offer over. An absent fang teethed his lip, and the deep garnet eyes were pensive. Beckett looked at Daddy and longed for more similarity between them. Besides the obvious difference in skin tone, Beckett’s sharp nose struck the biggest contrast, since Daddy’s nose was broad and flat. They had the same general head shape—heavier brows matched by elegant, pointed cheekbones, and their sharp jawlines narrowed to square chins. Daddy’s eyes had a more sloped curve to them, but they were the exact same hue, with cherry and tawny irises and slit cat pupils, wide now with fond desire.

As Beckett played observer, he was observed. Daddy raised a finger and traced a knuckle down his cheek. His eyelashes fluttered. “We are not playing politics like the spider and the fly here, sweet boy. There is no web, and I will not ensnare you in a trap. I am not granting a boon, nor will I ever collect one from you. From the moment you were Embraced, you were mine and I loved you.”

Daddy cupped Beckett’s cheek to guide their foreheads to touch. “Beckett, do you not think you deserve saving?”

Beckett jerked as if burned, but at once Daddy grabbed and yanked him by the hair. Tears sprung to his eyes as he shrieked. Daddy stopped the sound by crushing their lips together, by nipping Beckett’s tongue with his fangs, by dominating his mouth. As sudden as the attack had begun, it stopped. “How dare you. How dare the world make you think so. You are a sweet boy. You are _my_ sweet boy. You deserve mercy, passion, and song. I want you to bear the heavy weight of them. I will save you and you will live forever, marked as mine.” Beckett whimpered as Daddy released his hair. “Now wipe your mouth.”

Something like a sunrise quivered within. Beckett complied too eagerly. The action sent him pitching to one side, but Daddy caught and bound him in strong arms, hugged him close, and pet his head. “Easy, easy, my sweetness.”

The hole in his tongue would heal quick, and joy that he didn’t have to speak in the meanwhile reigned. He buried his face into Daddy’s dreads, and the Argon oil smell invaded, with a deeper scent of his black skin, like patchouli and cedarwood. Incense and mourning.

His heart beat slower, calmer, but this close he could hear Daddy’s too. It was a slow, steady organ—reliable and forever and totally alien to him. He breathed, and though the scents were pleasant, breathing wasn’t his natural state.

With slow reverence, Daddy lifted and lay him on the bed. A warm finger traced down his face, and Beckett remembered what temptation tasted like in Daddy’s mouth. Softer, Daddy kissed in a thorough way, like an explorer documenting every sensation, and his hands explored too—strong callus curled into Beckett’s hair, lingered on his collar bones, cupped his chest, noted his ribs, smoothed his stomach, and followed the happy trail to what twitched under. Beckett only broke off his direct supply to apple lips and apple teeth to unbuckle his belt and kick his trousers and boxers to the floor.

“Good boy,” Daddy praised. “Now show me how you like it, but do not finish.”

Beckett mewled in surrender to the command. He gripped his cock with rough abandon and pulled and rubbed and slid a fat thumb over the round top. Blood flowed effortless within him.

“I see,” Daddy said, his voice indicating neither praise nor disapproval. The heat of his body pressed closer, and his nose nuzzled under Beckett’s jaw and his hot breath ghosted over Beckett’s neck. “Remember not to cum.”

Daddy hissed and bit down.

A howl burst out of him. He arched his back, and at once Daddy’s hands flattened his shoulders down like iron weights. Incandescent arousal flooded his system from where Daddy’s teeth ripped his skin. His cock jolted in his hand and leaked over his fingers.

Daddy drank almost nothing before he licked the wound closed. Beckett didn’t have time to mourn the loss before Daddy shifted to hover over him and bite both breasts, his sternum, and his soft stomach in succession. Beckett howled for a second time as pleasure ran wild through his system, sparking and roiling like boiling revolution, like an overthrowing. He had no time to recover as Daddy pushed his hands off and swallowed Beckett whole.

The blankets, already beginning to stain with blood, were now torn by Beckett’s claws as they found purchase on the mattress springs. Daddy simply held Beckett’s cock in the mouth, his glowing scarlet eyes looking up with appraisal, waiting for him to settle. Beckett’s cock strained in Daddy’s wet heat, but he breathed and tried not to think about it. Not yet. He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed. Not yet.

Daddy must have been satisfied, for he started to move, to suck and swirl and tease. Colors blurred across his eyelids, cedarwood, patchouli, and his own cinnamon smell warmed the air, seething liquid pleasure pooled in the bottom of his belly. He had trembled before with grief—now he tensed in an all-consuming effort to follow Daddy’s command.

Daddy knew his struggle—Daddy knew how good he was doing, because Daddy’s large hand consoled by smoothing the hairs on Beckett’s thighs. Beckett shifted to allow more room, to allow more praise and Daddy’s nails pressed into the fat of him. Spit dripped down as Daddy’s wide nose tickled the curly root of him.

The long suck on his cock distracted Beckett from the sound of a cap opening, from the squish of a digit being slicked, and it was an entire surprise when Daddy breached his hole. Beckett keened and scrambled—Daddy shoved his belly down.

Slow, steady, agonizing, Daddy sucked him and fingered him. Beckett’s breathing stuttered—his body was made of light, of melting gold, of broiling blood and sinew and bone all taunt as a drawn bowstring. All tingled and all awoke, but to blessing instead of pain. His hands gripped the bedsprings like they were a cliff edge. He couldn’t open his eyes or he would cum instantly. He grasped at tatters of control, flimsy spiderweb of nothing. If Daddy touched his nub, he would lose. He would lose and Daddy would be disa—

His cock came out of that wet, hot shaft. “My sweet boy, you have been very good. An impressive legend. I am proud of you. Let go now. You look ready to pop.”

One flex of a finger and Beckett yelled in release. White against his vision; simmering semen against his stomach.

Daddy purred against his skin, and Beckett could look again, could see Daddy’s wry grin, like that of pleased panther. “We will have many nights like this, my sweet boy. If we did not have work to do, we would spend a century.”

Beckett nodded, because of course Daddy would save him forever. Daddy said he deserved it. Daddy rose and licked Beckett’s blood and semen up, so when they kissed again, it tasted of apples and himself and salt.

Beckett’s tongue had healed. “Thank you, thank you, Daddy,” he said among all kisses Daddy bestowed over his face—his cheeks, his chin, his nose, all the corners of his forehead. Beckett floated boneless on the bed as he loosed his grip on the springs in favor of burying fingers in Daddy’s dreads and sliding a callused palm down Daddy’s spine.

Daddy drew away. Beckett’s heart twinged in question, only for it to be more than answered as Daddy sat back on his haunches, retrieved the lube, and slicked up his cock. Beckett shifted and opened his legs wider in eagerness. With a touch, a push, and a groan, Daddy was inside him, and Beckett felt full and safe and complete.

“Haaa,” Daddy panted. Sweat dewed on his brow, and he pressed their hands together palm to palm, fingers twined flat into the abused mattress. Beckett’s cock stood half-hard already. Euphoria bubbled through his system like champagne in a glass.

Daddy’s powerful, thick thighs retreated and thrust in with a pornographic smack. Beckett moaned at the zinging, sizzling jolt of being pounded. Daddy soon found a rhythm, and Beckett held on the ride.

Their joined hands became slick, and Beckett gripped harder. Roiling waves of buzzing joy built in him, over and over and over. Thermal heat in his diaphragm, coming out of his lungs as he gasped and gibbered and begged. He didn’t know what litany he recited, what petitions he prayed, but it didn’t matter, because he trusted Daddy to answer them all.

Beckett looked up at his lover: he took in the thick oiled dreads, the clean cedar and black patchouli sweat, the glossy umber of his skin, the contraction and extension of his muscles as he worked, as he pumped Beckett full of endorphins and love and oxytocin, the glowing burgundy sunset of his cat eyes. My God, Caine was—

Beautiful.

#

_Dear Cassandra,_

_It is done and, miraculously, we’re alive. Beckett said he’s going to have peace talks with Aristotle, which, I will point out, we’ve been telling him to do since this whole thing started. Anatole returned to Paris, where he’s no doubt burying himself in therapeutic Bible stories. Fatima and I are in Madrid, having a well-earned bubble bath. No idea where Kapaneus is headed—probably vanishing into whatever ether he came from._

_I doubt Montreal will hold our mutual beloved idiot for long. He’ll run back to your arms soon, and you can get the full story from him. Oh, and tell him I came home to a letter from María on my desk, asking if we’d like to go to this year’s Palla Grande in Mexico City or at least come for a social visit. She hinted she might have found some Nod fragments with interesting word variations. I have enjoyed being Autarkis scholar again._

_Your sister,_

_Lucita de Aragón_

#

Caine woke to the sound of a board being wrenched off the window.

Faster than the human eye could follow, Caine blitzed over to Beckett, seized upon his stumbling body, and dragged the Gangrel back into the shadow, flailing and screaming.

“Let me go, Kapaneus!” Beckett shouted. “You can’t stop me!”

No smoke, no flames—he touched Beckett up and down, and the white skin was as cool and unblemished as marble. His mind swirled with consequence and calculation. Crouching in the relative safety of a corner, he wrapped his arms around Beckett’s front, willed his muscles to be strong as steel and tough as diamond, and pressed them together, hard enough that his heart thudded against Beckett’s back. He must wait, and he must tread gentle. “You are like me—a Daywalker.”

Beckett roared and struggled with animal fury, but what is an animal to a god. It was time to employ the patience taught to him by time out of mind. He waited for Beckett to exhaust the blood, to cry out the desperation, and regain bearings.

Patience was rewarded. Somewhat. Angry tears clogged Beckett’s throat when he stopped and muttered, “Damn you.”

“I was the third to be so.”

“I haven’t believed in you for three hundred years and I’m not starting now.”

“A pity.” Caine huffed in disappointment, though relief spread in his heart like a rose in summer. Beckett’s body had relaxed against his. He eased them both into a sitting position on the carpet, and their embrace resembled more that of lovers than prisoner and jailer. He kissed the junction of Beckett’s neck and shoulder. “It’s rude to tell me I don’t exist while I’m kissing you.”

Beckett wiped his tears, rested his hands on Caine’s forearms, and sighed. The three o’clock sunbeam shone through the window in total innocence of its deadly nature. Very, very few of his childer were immune, and there were other ways to destroy oneself if walking in the sun did not work. If he had not woken—well, it did not bear thinking of, but it had happened before. Much, much better, dearer to his heart, was a reality where he and Beckett were naked and entwined on the floor.

“You boosted my powers so much that I can walk in the day, and I don’t feel the pull of torpor,” Beckett said in a dry voice, as if this wasn’t a convenient miracle that had saved Caine from grief. “There goes my centuries’ old sleep cycle.”

Caine nuzzled his nose against the nape of Beckett’s neck and breathed in the cinnamon scent there. Beckett shivered. A beat of silence and Caine decided to ask: “Matthew, what were you thinking?”

Beckett’s voice held the grit of animal skin scoured for leather. “Last night changed nothing. It was a fluke. A blip. Nothing more.”

“The Withering is not gone, even after we exchanged blood?”

“I’m going to die and you’re going to like it, Kapaneus.”

“I wish you would not call me that. It is a husk, a mask.”

Caine was reminded of a rubber band. Extraordinary things, these bands. During Gehenna, Beckett had stretched and relaxed with great alacrity, as they jumped from one dilemma to the next, with a few restful nights of travel in between. Last night had stretched Beckett to his limit—with his friends gone and no apocalypse to distract him, the Withering and the death it entailed loomed over his soul. Caine had added his revelation, and perhaps the Beckett rubber band had snapped at last. Snapped on Caine’s fingers and bit him, firmly returning to its original shape more stubborn than ever.

He stretched the fingers of his hand across Beckett’s breast and caressed his lover down to the belly. “If I forced you to cannibalize someone, you would hate me.” He stated it like the fact it was.

“I already hate you,” Beckett said, though the childish spite in his voice ran hollow.

“No, you don’t,” Caine murmured, and he nibbled the fat muscle of Beckett’s shoulder, eliciting a groan from the Gangrel. Plans formed in his mind. “I will keep boosting you until the disease makes that help useless. Then, I will find the finest human blood, and perhaps that mixed with mine will sustain you longer.”

Beckett tensed, and Caine released his hold. “I do not—” Beckett began, putting a hand on his knee to rise, “—want your help, Kapaneus!” Beckett toppled over like the walls of Jericho, and faster than lightening Caine caught him and cradled him in his arms.

So ill, so soon. It would come to diablerie. But he could not force Beckett, or Beckett would never forgive him. Who would Beckett forgive? Who did Beckett love enough to forgive for anything and would ease him to truth? Who could create the right circumstances that cannibalism would be acceptable and forgotten in an instant? Who knew and owed Caine something?

“We will go to Moscow. It is closest and most recognizable,” he decided over Beckett’s grumbling. Carrying Beckett close to his chest like a newborn, he marched out of the dratted hotel.

Beckett squirmed and wriggled like a fish. “I don’t want to go to Moscow!”

“You will go, and Cesare will make sad faces at you the whole flight,” Caine said. As they reached the stairs, he maneuvered the fish into a fireman’s carry again, since it was easier.

“What about my things!”

“I will go back for them while you wait in the car. Stop acting like a brat, Matthew. It does not suit.”

Beckett emitted a shriek of impotent rage, but the ridiculousness of the situation reduced any amount of terror the gesture could imply. “Fine! Fine. We go to Moscow and I’ll die surrounded by pierogi-smelling Nosferatu. Joy.”

“I will keep my promises, even if you do not like them.” Caine assured, and he carried his love into the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey friends! I hope you enjoyed. I'd like to thank DaughterOfElmStreet for all her help with the Daddy Kink portions. I've never written Daddy Kink before and it was a fun challenge! Thank you!


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